Tuesday, August 18, 2015

AAA’s
Triplemania XXIII is the first Lucha Libre PPV to be broadcast in North America
since “When Worlds Collide” was on November 6, 1994, however it originated from
Los Angeles, California.Triplemania
XXIII is the first Lucha Libre PPV ever to originate live from Mexico.

The American
broadcast was marred with technical issues through-out the event.The commentating team of Hugo Savinovich and
Matt Striker didn’t seem to mesh well together and you could not hear
Savinovich until the final two matches.Striker did his best, but unfortunately it was not very good yelling and
exaggerated “WOW” and “Nicely Done” instead of calling the maneuvers.I realize he was the color man and not play
by play, but knowing that Hugo could not be heard he should have switched rolls.

The show
featured 6 matches with lots of pageantry and pomp and circumstance in between
them.Also it featured the Hall of Fame
inductions of Perro Aguayo Jr. & Hector Garza, both posthumously.This even also celebrated the retirement of
wrestler Villano III and referee Pepe “Tropi” Casas.They also celebrated the Blue Demon Jr’s 30th
Anniversary in Lucha Libre.All of these
events featured what I can assume were wonderful video packages, plus the promo
videos that built the matches shown prior to them were all in Spanish.That is to be expected considering the event,
however, with Hugo Savinovich’s microphone not working there was no one to
translate what we were watching leaving all meaning gone to me.

Lucha Libre
is a different style than wrestling in America and Japan and I knew that going
in.I haven’t watched a ton of AAA
before, however, I have watched a lot of CMLL back when I had cable and it was
broadcast on the Fox Sports en Espanol.The trios matches were very similar to what we saw on WCW when they
brought in the lucha libre cruiserweights.At times there is a lot of tumbling and this can be done well where it
looks good and it can be done horribly where is looks really bad, and that was
what most of this evening gave us.

Another
oddity was in AAA there do not use a ring bell, they blow a whistle to start
the match and the finish is either a 3 count, which is extremely slow, or if a
submission the referees wave their hands, once, in the “safe motion” and that
signals the end of the match.AAA uses a
six sided ring.

This match
featured men, woman, cross dressers, a midget, and a transgender.It was actually a decent match with the
typical craziness that comes from a 8 person tag, but even more so considering
those involved.The finish came when
Pimpinela Escarlata submitted Sexy Star.

Villano III
& V had lost their masks in the past but were allowed to wear them one last
time for this match but had to unmask immediately after the match.This match rough to watch, the Villanos at
63, 53, & 50 years old and it showed.There is family history between the two as the Villanos represent the
Mendoza family and Psycho Clown the Alvarado family and this match started with
a feud between Villano IV and Psycho Clown.

One of the
oddest things I have ever seen in wrestling happened, near the end Psycho Clown
was in the ring with a chair while Villano III stood there waiting for him to
hit him, Psycho Clown started saluting him and it was explained that his beef
was with Villano IV not III and that he respected III.He did the same thing moments later when he
would not complete the pinfall on Villano III breaking the count himself at 2 and
more saluting. That’s when Villano IV kicked him in the junk and pinned him, to
wish Villano III & V cried foul with IV dismissing them and heading to the
back.

Villano III
& V unmasked with the remaining men from both teams celebrating in the ring
Villano III’s final match. This was also the final bout for referee Pepe
“Tropi” Casa and he counted the pinfall.During a post-match ceremony both Pepe and Villano III were awarded
plaques.

Nine people
is just too many people for this match.Also the camera work with terrible, the first shot once the match
started was to pull back to the corner of the arena where you could not make
out what was happening in the ring.Then
we get this view from the top of the cage looking down into the ring at an odd
angle so the moves don’t look quite right.Because there were so many guys there was a lot of standing around also
there were 6 rudos (bad guys) and 3 technicos (good guys).

This match
didn’t flow, there were table spots and other high spots that made no
sense.I watched it twice on different
days and my account is the same.To win
you had to pull down one of the three belts that were attached to what appeared
to be a light rigging over the ring.Los
Hell Brothers retrained when Averno, who is clearly scared of heights,
unattached a belt.

Blue Demon Jr & La Parka defeated
Electroshock & El Mesias

This matched
featured a series of that Lucha Libre tumbling that I wrote about earlier that
when done wrong looks bad, and this looked horrid.I’ve never seen anything more obvious then
when Blue Demon and Electroshock were in the ring with each other. I understand wrestling is pre-determined,
however I still like a bit of realism allowing me to suspend my disbelief.That was impossible with this match up.

Blue Demon
and La Parka picked up the win.

At this
point in the production they finally fixed Hugo Savinovich’s audio and we could
hear him for the final two matches.

This was a
non-title hair vs hair match. From what I gather they had been feuding since
Brian Cage entered AAA in February pinned Patron in a trios match.Cage defeated Patron in a non-title match in
April.Then in June Patron defeated Cage
by DQ in the title match and it ended with Cage draping the United States Flag
on Patron’s unconscious body, which set up this non-title match that was about
honor.

I had high
hopes because Brian Cage is a fucking machine and Alberto can go in the ring as
well.It was the best match of the night
so far, but not very good.The seconds
interfered in the match several times and the referee, who is Mexican, was
apparently a bad guy and interfered on Cage’s behalf, refused to count a pin
fall and other over the top evil referee shenanigans that don’t add to a
match.

Eventually
Patron took out the evil ref and another ref ran in to call the match via
submission.I feel AAA dropped the ball
on this as it was the perfect opportunity for Pepe “Tropi” Casa to amble down
to the ring for one more last bid of glory.Cage could say that Casa was officially no longer a referee and he
couldn’t have called the finish thus nullifying the match.

So Cage lost
and had his head shaved.After he
charged Patron, ate a powerbomb and got the Mexican flag draped on him.During the match Patron got busted open and
they booth took several chair shots to the head.Not metal folding, but those plastic folding
ones.

The mat was
very quiet through-out the event and you could only sporadically hear the
wrestlers bumping in the ring.When you
see Cage get powerbombed and when he hits the canvas you hear no impact, it’s
loses everything.

Main Event “Dream Match”

Rey Mysterio Jr. vs. Myzteziz

Billed as
the best masked Luchador in the States vs. the best masked Luchador in Mexico
to see who is truly the best masked Luchador in the world.The only real build up is the fact that it
was a dream match.During the introductions
they mentioned out Myzteziz started out as Mistico then became Sin Cara and now
has become Myzteziz.

This was the
best match on the show, I even liked it.Rey reminded me of the Mysterio of old battling around the ring using
tables and other devices.Myzteziz was
busted open under his mask but managed to get pretty coated in blood.After a hard fought bout Mysterio picked up
the win forcing Myzteziz to tap out to a fujiwara armbar.I can’t recall ever seeing Mysterio win by
submission.

After the
match Mysterio went to the floor to celebrate with fans and the AAA
President.Averno, Pentagon Jr. and Joe
Lider ran down and bear the tar out of Myzteziz.Mysterio ran in for the save, took a beating
himself but eventually they teamed up and sent the rudo’s packing.

Mysterio
offered his hand to Myzteziz who spit mist in Mysterios face, turned heel and
challenged Mysterio to a mask vs. mask match.Konnan and his crew La Sociedad ran in and attacked Mysterio and the PPV
abruptly ended.

All in all
this event was very poorly executed.I
realize that you have to look at this as an event where feuds culminate and
feuds begin and not knowing the history it can be confusing.However, this was the same for NJPW’s Wrestle
Kingdom 9 and they managed to execute an excellent night of matches.

Saturday, August 15, 2015

Former CZW Champion and Indy Standout Drew Gulak talks to Colt about his career and where he wants it to go.

Episode 261 5th Anniversary

This
podcast features Colt talking about himself and the direction of the
podcast. Also he airs a portion of a 2012 premium podcast with Keven
Steen (Owens) which is interesting based on
where Steen’s career was and where he saw it going, especially when you
consider where it is.

Episode 262 Truth Martini (The Border)

This
episode is similar the Cliff Compton Nigeria podcast as this entire
show is Truth talking about is issues getting into Canada for the
biggest show of his career for Ring of Honor. Fantastic!

No
real direction, just Colt talking to a couple wrestlers and a couple
comedians, all wrestling related though, at the Fringe Festival. It’s
hilarious all through-out!

WOOOOO! Nation with Ric Flair

Episode 13 Mark Madden

Ric
and Mark talk about sports, WCW, and more in a great conversation
between friends. Mark has a unique perspective about his time in WCW
and for DDP.

Jim Cornette Experience

Episode 87: Live from Charlotte

Recorded at the NWA Legends Fanfest in Charlotte, NC

Talk is Jericho

Episode 161 Ian Ziering

Ian talks about he thought both Sharknado and 90210 would flop, clearly he was wrong. Great conversation that flies by.

Episode 164 “Mr. Belding” Dennis Haskins

This
has become one of my favorite’s podcast interviews! Mr. Belding talks
about what he did before acting as a road manager for one of the Alman
Brothers. What the character Mr. Belding
means to him and how it doesn’t bother him that he was typecast as the
character.

Episode 166 Roddy Piper Memories and New Day

Very funny chat with the members of New Day, well worth the listen.

How Did This Get Made

Episode 115: Sharknado 3 Oh Hell No! (with Scott Aukerman)

I didn’t really find this one funny, but Jason Mantzoukas is always a pleasure to listen too.

The Moth Radio Hour

Kate Braestrup & Pilar Siman

A Warden Chaplain helps others deal with death after facing her own tragedy, and a college freshman falls in love at 11pm Mass.

Camp, Cars, Cockroaches, and the Kremlin

A
girl at summer camp tries to keep up with her sophisticated fellow
campers, a writer loses a treasured pair of pants, a young man accused
of stealing ends up living up of his car, and a
writer lands in Moscow on the eve of a revolution.

Live From The Moth GrandSLAM

Taped live on July 15, 2015 in Brooklyn, New York.

Arthur Bradford & Laura Gershman

A
man spends his second wedding anniversary in jail after getting picked
up on an outstanding warrant from the Parks and Recreation department,
and two sisters are dropped off at the mall
as part of their mother’s elaborate ruse.

Paul Rudd
A really great conversation between Chris and Paul about everything from their dead dads and Antman.

Mystery Show

Case 2 Britney

I
first learned of this show listening to the most recent “Wait, Wait,
Don’t Tell Me” podcast. Starlee Kine created this podcast after
listening to “Serial” deciding that she wanted to solve
mysteries that no one else could solve. Although this isn’t her first
case it was the one that they spoke of on “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me.”
This episode is about her friend who wrote and book that did not do well
and is hard to find, even she the author
cannot find it.

One day her friend saw a photo of Britney Spears carrying her book and wants to know why and if she liked it.

Case 1 Video Store
In this first case Starlee investigates her friends claim that on a Sunday she went to a video store for the first time, signed up for an account, and rented a movie. When she went to return it the next day the video store was closed, had gone out of business and the inside of the store was empty. This was in 2005.

Thanks for reading, please leave a comment and like my blogs facebook page, or perhaps follow me on twitter.

Tuesday, August 11, 2015

I realize I haven’t done a post on any new trading
cards in a while, but I haven’t gotten any new ones. I suppose I could
go back and highlight the other cards that I have any perhaps I will do
that in the future.

On Sunday August 3rd I attended
Northeast Wrestling in Lowell, MA on the card that night were the one
and only Nick & Matt Jackson, the Young Bucks! I spoke with both of
them for several minutes and they were really nice to
talk to. I had these TNA cards from India of them that they had never
seen before so I gave them to them. Matt immediately took a photo and
posted it on twitter.

This card is from a set called Independent Pro
Wrestling or IPW that was released in 2015 by a gentleman in
California. A very limited release I was lucky to get my hands on this
one and a few others from this set.

These two cards I bought on ebay from a seller in
Japan. Put together these cards reveal the finishing move “More Bang
for Your Buck”. They were released in 2014 as part of the King of
Pro-Wrestling card game in Japan.

This card I bought from the Young Bucks, I couldn’t
help myself as they are known for their Superkick’s and this is a
Superkick card. It is part of the same King of Pro-Wrestling card game
in Japan released in 2014.

This card is one I got signed at Chikara Pro July 28, 2012 in Portland, Maine. It’s a TNA Tristar New Era card set from 2010, card 18.

Thanks for reading, please leave a comment and like my blog on Facebook.

Friday, August 7, 2015

Cactus Jack, Dude Love, Mankind, or Mick Foley, no
matter what you call him he is one of the most well-known wrestlers
around the world. This set of cards is one of my favorite as it
represents 4 different companies under 4 different gimmicks.

These cards I got signed at a Big Time Wrestling
event in Augusta at the Civic Center on March 27, 2011. I had done some
postering and other work for the promoter so I able to get my photo
taken with Mick three of his books, and these
6 cards signed for free!

This card features Cactus Jack from IWA Japan
released by Baseball Magazine in 1995. I got this on ebay for about $5
and I love it because it depicts the image of what Cactus Jack was in
Japan.

These three cards were released in 1998 by Comic
Images and depict the famous 3 Faces of Foley of Cactus Jack, Mankind,
and Dude Love. Mick signed each card as the name that is depicted by
the gimmick on the card.

This WWF card released by Fleer in 2001 shows Mick Foley as Mick Foley, and he signed it as such.

This TNA Card released by TriStar in 2009 shows a bloody Mick Foley as TNA World Champion.

After I had the above cards signed I found a WCW
card of Cactus Jack. I wasn’t able to get it signed until July 2, 2015
when Mick made an appearance at a Sea Dogs game in Portland. I wasn’t
able to go by my friend Mikey went and got it
signed for me.

This is a Cactus Jack card printed by London
Publishing for WCW in 1992 as part of a set that was released in issues
of WCW Magazine.

I fully believe that my collection of signed Mick Foley cards is now complete.

On Sunday August 2nd Northeast Wrestling
presented “Wrestling Under the Stars” in Lowell, Ma at Lelacheur Park
where the Red Sox A ball club the Lowell Spinners play. When this show
was announced I was interested in going, not
for Rey Mysterio, but for The Young Bucks! They are so hot right now
across the country and in Japan. Also I had never been to a Northeast
Wrestling show and have wanted to for some time.

Eventually tickets were bought with Mikey, Roy, & I deciding to go to the show. We left Sunday
morning for the 2.5 hour drive not stopping until we made it to
Lowell. I had wanted to try this place called Elliot’s Lunch Cart that
is a
Hot Dog joint that has been around for years but they were closed.

We got parked back over the stadium and walked to a
place called Brother’s Pizza, it was sketchy so we settled for Lowell
Beer Works. The food was good, but my Burger was deceptively small.
Roy got the breakfast as they serve brunch until
2pm. The waitress was very slow and we didn’t get back to the park until after the gates opened.

The meet and greet was set up the worst I have ever
seen. The wrestlers were set up downstairs in a circle and I can see
why they thought it would be a good idea. That way you could go from
one person to the next to get your autographs
and photos and what not. If you wanted to get down to the meet and
greet they had one line that lead down to it and the first wrestler you
came to was Rey Mysterio Jr. Now admittedly the majority of the people
there wanted to meet Rey, however if you didn’t
want to it didn’t matter because you had to wait for everyone else that
did to get by him.

It was so dumb! At every other signing I have been
to you go into the area where the wrestlers are, they have their tables
and you go to who you want to see, not one big line for all. It took
two hours for us to get down to the meet and
greet area.

I got all my cards signed by The Young Bucks, a
picture with them. One with Michael Bennet and Maria, and one with
Dijak Nick Jackson did this video I posted a couple months back called
Nick Jackson’s Birthday Bash and when I asked him
about it he says it was an homage to a video that Kenny Omega did.

I thought the matches would start late, and they
did but only 15 minutes. They opened with a ten bell salute to “Rowdy”
Roddy Piper who had passed away Friday. The show featured 8 matches and an intermission that stretched to 30 minutes
with the show ending at 8pm.
Highspots was there with their variety of merchandise as well as a
couple other vendors. Mikey and Roy picked up 4 – 5 DVD’s each, Roy is
quite addicted to buying wrestling DVD’s.

At one point in my life I was addicted to buying
everything and anything wrestling. However, after the flood destroyed
my collection I began to realize that having anything and everything
didn’t really matter. I still have quite a nice
collection of wrestling memorabilia however I am much more selective of
what I spend my money on.

It was a great night of matches, with The Young
Bucks vs. The Kingdom & Dijak vs. Flip Gordon being the best two
matches of the evening. All the matches were very good, even though
Samoa Joe was just going through the motions. He’s got
a deal with WWE and he’s finishing up his indy bookings so I guess I
can’t blame him for not wanting to get injured in front of 2000 people
in Lowell on a one off appearance. In the ladies match Alexxis worked
her butt off playing the heal while Mickie James
was kind of going through the motion as well.

Dijak is a big dude and he’s got a great future in
wrestling. He’s agile and moves like a smaller guy. He’s gotten a lot
better in the ring and we will see him in the WWE one day. I had never
seen Flip Gordon before but he was great
in the ring with some awesome aerial offense. I’d really like to see
him again in the future.

The Young Bucks were fantastic and the hometown
boys of The Kingdom were way over. It looked like Taven got legit
injured in the match but he powered through and both team delivered.

The main event triple threat was carried by Alberto
El Patron who came out to a big ovation and when full heel on the mic
before the match. Rey won after hiding on the outside of the ring for
the majority of the match. The match was better
than I thought it would be, but Rey still managed to piss me off.

After the matches we headed a mile down the road to
Jimmy John’s to get Kate her favorite sandwich. The website said they
were open until 10pm but at 815pm the lights were off and doors locked up tight. We went to go to another place
across the street but they had no restroom, that wasn’t going to work for any of us.

We ended up jumping on 495 North and when I
realized that we would be passing the Cracker Barrel just a couple miles
down the road, and that it was Sunday
I knew that we were stopping. Not to mention that neither Mikey nor
Roy had ever
been to Cracker Barrel. Exit 39 was the exit we wanted, and of course
the ramp was closed due to construction. We had to go a few miles up
the road and exit onto 93 which looped us back onto 495 South, but I had
Mikey call to make sure they would be open.

Back in 2009 Jay, Rood, and I went to Webster, MA
to meet Ric Flair and get out picture taken with him for the first time
ever. On the way home we stopped at this very same Cracker Barrel, it
was a Sunday and that was when I learned that
the Sunday
special is home style fried chicken! Two boneless chicken breast
dipped in buttermilk and breading and fried to golden brown perfection!
It’s only available on Sunday’s which is why I made the executive decisions that this is where we were going
to eat.

Mikey also got the chicken but Roy went with the
breakfast sampler. Roy is a big fan of Breakfast and the Barrel serves
it all day every day. I brought Kate home 4 biscuits and apple butter
at her request. The chicken was so delicious!

We made it back to my house about midnight the end to a great day. I look forward to our next wrestling adventure.

Contributors

Michael J. Labbe

Husband, father of three, and lover of all things professional wrestling Michael is the founder of The Wrestling Insomniac and posts unique articles about wrestling, live event reports, and regular columns The Last Match and Signed Trading Cards.

superstarreview@gmail.com

Brandon Myers

Brandon, a wrestling fan of over thirty years, enjoys all wrestling but spends most of his time watching classic Memphis and WCW matches. Brandon contributes live event reports, documentary/DVD reviews, and other assorted wrestling posts.

LuchaKoopa@gmail.com

Roy Kenny

Roy 's column Roy's Reviews focuses on reports from events he has attended and wrestling DVD's.